Wristbands or bracelets with printed areas for identifying hospital patients have been described in a number of patents, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,197,899; 4,314,415; 4,318,234; 4,612,718; 4,682,431; 5,026,084; 5,364,133; 5,423,574; 5,448,846; 5,457,906 and 5,581,924. Attention is also directed to U.S. Pat. No. 5,662,976, granted Sep. 2, 1997, and assigned to the assignee of this invention. This patent involves a laminated sheet structure of transparent plastic and card stock for forming a flat card, such as a membership card, protected by transparent plastic on both sides thereof. Returning to the hospital bands, efforts to improve the utility of identification wristbands or bracelets have been described in the first group of patents cited above. For example, the use of a transparent cover for the printed information has been proposed, e.g., in U.S. Pat. No. 3,197,899; a plurality of identification devices in sheet form for application of indicia by typewriter is proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,138,234; a band comprising a plurality of strips laminated together, with an insert underlying the outer strip and having indicia thereon is proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,314,415; and an identification band blank which can be removed from a hospital admission form and, with data applied thereto, secured by means of an adhesive tab portion to the wrist of a patient but with no protective cover for the data, is proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,682,431.
Each of the proposals of the cited art, however, has one or more disadvantages such as cost of manufacture, complexity of use, absence of a conveniently applied transparent cover for printed areas or inability to be printed in sheet fed printers or lack of convenient fastening means. A need exists for an easily manufactured article from which covered identification bands with adhesive fastening tabs can quickly and easily be formed. More particularly, a need exists for such an article in sheet form that can provide both bands and labels that are printed with correlated indicia by means of a sheet-fed printer and that can conveniently provide adhesive fastening tabs and a transparent cover for printed indicia. The present invention provides such an article.